Rugosa rose –a painting a day

Yesterday I forgot to mention that I got really close to a strange fat dragonfly in the garden, I wanted to know what it was and discovered a really good dragonfly site which made it possible to work out that I had seen a Broad-bodied Chaser (Libellula depressa) female the site is:

Today I had a go with the electric strimmer and tidied up yet more edges and rough bits. Just cutting down rank weed growth doesn’t cure the problem but it does make it look a whole lot more doable and neater in the meantime.

I also wrote to my MP and asked him to find out why Michael Gove is in such a tearing hurry to get as many schools as possible to convert to academies by this autumn. Does he know how this will work? He’s had recent similar experience? If you rush things they do not work well …and when it’s my children’s education being dismantled I worry. If the schools rush to become acadamies then the local authority will lose funding and all the central shared services will be cut out or at least I imagine that will be the effect.

Things are moving on very fast, next doors peonies are out and mine have fat buds, the first large clematis has opened and the climbing roses although behind their normal slot are opening. The rose hedge has about thirty flowers fully opened out. They smell delicious. The other rose with a fabulous but different smell is Etoile d’Hollande which normally opens earlier in the month for my brothers birthday ( we used to call it his birthday rose when we were children) it has three flowers open and more to come.